Renee Zarate's Bolton House is still in New England but Renee herself has moved on to South Carolina. The days are a little different now, no garden to take care of means more studio time. Dealing with snow and blizzards will be a thing of the past but there will be new challenges. Challenges like...how will we ever carry these two chairs and this huge umbrella down to the beach? Stay tuned.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Maya Road Chipboard Box becomes a sewing kit gift!

It seems like in the summer months all of us do a few road trips here and there.Sometimes they involve staying over with friends and relatives along the way.I always like to bring a little hostess gift when I come to stay.It generally involves a bottle of whatever the host/hostess likes to drink but in this case I wanted to add something special that reminds me of Cape Cod or the East Coast beach get aways.Maya Road was very generous in sending me several things to play with this month and I decided a small box could be transformed into an emergency sewing kit for the hostess to use for herself or to leave in a guest room for the next visitor.I bought a tiny emergency sewing kit and dropped it inside the box when it was finished but you can do whatever you like with it.

The box starts out as a plain chipboard sturdy little blank canvas measuring 3” by 3” with a hinged lid.

I knew I was using a red, white and blue theme based on the G45 paper that I had chosen called Place in Time.The paper is reminiscent of the turn of the century/early 1900’s at the beach.It has sweet images of young women frolicking at the ocean, driving cars, etc.It is a double sided paper but I still needed another sheet of paper for matting so I used Authentique’s Friendship paper to coordinate with it.

I began by measuring and cutting four pieces of white cardstock each measuring 3”by3”.I distressed the edges of all 4 white panels with IMAGINE Crafts®/Tsukineko®StazOn®Solvent Ink in Blazing Red using an IMAGINE Crafts®InkBlusher™ which allows me more control in fine areas like this.All four panels were set aside as I cut out the pictures I wanted to use from the G45 paper, I trimmed all of these to approximately 1 7/8” by 2 ¼”.All of these images were matted onto a coordinating paper cut to 2 3/8” by 2 ½”.I glued the image to the matting and then the unit to the white panel.I made an extra matted image to be attached to the inside of the lid.

Inside and outside of the box I used an IMAGINE Crafts®/Tsukineko®Fantastix™ Multi-Purpose Applicator to apply IMAGINE Crafts®/Tsukineko®StazOn®Solvent Ink in Midnight Blue to make sure the edges looked finished in a matching color.I then cut panels to fit on all of the other additional exposed surfaces inside and outside of the box.

I wanted feet on the bottom of the box so I cut 2 of the Maya Road spools in half and painted them with IMAGINE Crafts®/Tsukineko®All-Purpose Ink in #19 Cerulean Blue.When the feet were dry I coated them with IMAGINE Crafts®Creative Medium ™, this gave them a little shine.Those were set aside to dry.

For a topper I used a wonderful measuring tape that was in my surprise box from John at Imagine Crafts.I took the tape and cut it into sections to loop and staple with small staples.I glued each looped section together with adhesive and piled them up until it turned into a nice sized bow to be glued on the top of the sewing box.

Now that I had all of my components ready it was just a matter of putting everything together.I used a strong adhesive to glue the top and bottom panels to the box.I glued the side panels all the way around the outside.I glued the inside panels to the sides and then fitted the final one on the bottom of the inside of the box.I stood the box upside down and glued the feet to the bottom and allowed them to dry.The bow was glued to the top of the box and I snuggled a self adhesive bee made by K&Co on to the bow.I used Queen and Co. self adhesive pearls in a Sapphire blue color at all four corners of the panels going around the box to finish it off.Now I have a lovely little gift box full of emergency sewing supplies perfect for a guest bathroom or bedroom.

Here is a list of all the products and tools that I used to transform this chipboard box into a tiny sewing box.